Donor withholds $60 million from Stanford University to protest Bush stem cell decision

Posted: Saturday, September 01, 2001

By Colleen VallesAssociated Press

SAN FRANCISCO -- Netscape founder Jim Clark is withholding $60 million he pledged to build a biomedical research center at Stanford University to protest President Bush's restrictions on stem cell research and congressional attempts to ban human cloning.

''Our country risks being thrown into a dark age of medical research,'' Clark wrote in an opinion column in The New York Times on Friday.

Clark said he was suspending payment of the balance of $150 million he pledged in 1999 because it would be futile for private funding to supplant federal grants. He also cited recent decisions to limit research to existing stem cell lines.

''It now seems that creating genetically compatible new skin cells for burn victims, pancreas cells for diabetics, nerve cells for those with spinal cord injuries and many, many other potential advances will soon be illegal in the United States,'' wrote Clark, a billionaire who also founded Silicon Graphics, Healtheon and MyCFO.

''Driven by ignorance, conservative thinking and fear of the unknown, our political leaders have undertaken to make laws that suppress this type of research.''

Earlier this month, Bush announced a policy to limit federal funding for medical research on embryonic stem cells. Bush, an abortion opponent, said it was important to ''pay attention to the moral concerns of the new frontier.''

Stem cells are created by removing an inner cell mass from a 5- to 7-day-old embryo, a procedure that kills the embryo. When properly nurtured, the cells are able to replicate, or divide, virtually forever, creating what is called a stem cell line.

Clark was apparently also objecting to legislation passed by the House of Representatives that would ban human cloning -- not just cloning for reproductive ends but also so-called therapeutic cloning. Such cloning would produce stem cells by creating embryos from the cells of a single person, giving scientists an exact tissue match to develop treatments for that person.

Construction of the Stanford facility is already under way and university officials said Friday that Clark's decision would not affect its 2003 completion target.

Stanford President John Hennessy said the university was ''saddened'' by Clark's decision, though he also expressed concern that restrictions on stem cell research and cloning could slow development in disease treatments.

The center will house projects that include efforts to grow healthy organs from other tissues. Construction of the 225,000-square-foot building, informally known as Bio-X, has been estimated to cost around $200 million.

This article published in the Athens Banner-Herald on Saturday, September 1, 2001.